ReviewLife (Basel, Switzerland)2026
Moving Beyond Outcome-Based Exercise Studies in Cognitive Aging: A Mechanism-Informed Narrative Review of Cerebrovascular Anchors and Supportive Biological Endpoints.
Review in Life (Basel, Switzerland), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Exercise training is frequently examined in relation to cognitive and brain health in aging populations. Yet many exercise-cognition studies remain difficult to interpret mechanistically because cognitive outcomes are often assessed without sufficient alignment with exercise dose, biological endpoints, or participant vulnerability. This mechanism-informed narrative review argues that future research in cognitive aging should move beyond outcome-based interpretation alone and more explicitly connect the exercise stimulus with cerebrovascular endpoints, supportive biological markers, baseline vulnerability, and cognitive or translational outcomes. The review treats cerebrovascular endpoints, including cerebral blood flow, cerebrovascular reactivity, endothelial function, vascular compliance, and neurovascular coupling, as primary mechanistic anchors because they are closely related to vascular cognitive vulnerability and are more proximal to biological adaptation than cognitive test scores alone. Immune-inflammatory markers, blood-brain barrier-related indicators, myokines, neurotrophic factors, and exercise-induced circulating factors are considered supportive endpoints because they may clarify broader biological responsiveness when selected according to a clear hypothesis. The review also considers how exercise modality, delivered dose, adherence, baseline fitness, vascular risk, cognitive status, sex, comorbidity, and recovery capacity may shape responder heterogeneity. The purpose of this review is to develop a mechanism-informed framework for interpreting exercise-cognition studies in aging by aligning the delivered exercise stimulus, participant vulnerability, biological responsiveness, and cognitive or translational outcomes. Based on this synthesis, we propose a five-layer endpoint framework that positions cerebrovascular measures as primary mechanistic anchors and supportive biological markers as hypothesis-dependent contextual endpoints. Its distinct contribution is to integrate these elements within a single interpretive structure rather than considering exercise exposure, biological responses, participant characteristics, and cognitive outcomes as separate domains. Rather than serving as a clinical prescription model or formal reporting guideline, the framework is intended to improve hypothesis-endpoint alignment and the mechanistic interpretation of exercise-cognition studies in aging.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.